Biggest disappointments from March Madness opening weekend
A thrilling start to the 2018 NCAA tournament brought no shortage of bracket-busting upsets.
Loyola Chicago hit two improbable game-winners to emerge as the Cinderella team of the tournament, a title that would have belonged to UMBC had they kept their run alive. But, the Retrievers will have to settle for making history after knocking off the No. 1 seed. Meanwhile, UNC's title defense didn't survive through the weekend as they ran into a buzzsaw side in Texas A&M.
Here are the biggest disappointments from the opening weekend.
Arizona falls way short
The talk entering the tournament was whether Arizona head coach Sean Miller would ever make the Final Four, but he couldn't even make it out of the first round.
Miller's team looked flat-out unprepared in their 21-point loss to Buffalo. The Wildcats trailed the entire game, never made adjustments, and couldn't deliver the ball to star center DeAndre Ayton, who finished with just 13 field-goal attempts in 38 minutes.
It was a brutal end to a demoralizing campaign for Miller, who spent the last few months dodging allegations instead of focusing on the tournament. It started with point guard Allonzo Trier losing his eligibility due to a failed drug test, then Miller faced the fallout from a reported taped discussion with Ayton over an ineligible payment. While all this happened, they lost the commitment from Shaquille O'Neal's son, Shareef, who took his talents to UCLA.
Ayton and Trier wasted no time fleeing the scene, as they both declared for the NBA draft. Arizona will have to start from scratch, and given Miller's shortcomings of late, it wouldn't be a surprise to see him get axed.
Virginia makes history
It's not just that Virginia became the first No. 1 seed in NCAA tournament history to lose to a No. 16 - the Cavaliers were the best team in the country heading into last weekend. They beat three tough opponents in Louisville, Clemson, and North Carolina to win the ACC tournament, and coach Tony Bennett boasted the best defense in the nation that limited opponents to a stingy 54 points per game. Meanwhile, UMBC got dropped in an 83-49 game by the "superpower" known as Albany.
Losing sixth man De'Andre Hunter to a hand injury is not an excuse for such an early exit, not when UMBC crushed them by 20 points in a wire-to-wire humiliation.
Tom Izzo outdueled
Michigan State was hardly the first team to get tripped up by Syracuse's signature 2-3 zone, but Izzo's squad looked helpless and unprepared.
There were no secrets with how Jim Boeheim would align his defense, yet Izzo's team offered no counters whatsoever in their unwatchable 55-53 loss. Michigan State stubbornly launched a school-record 37 threes, unable to get anything on the inside, and made just 25 percent of their shots from the field. The only action Izzo could draw up was an entry pass to a hesitant forward in the mid-post, resulting in nothing more than a reset.
Izzo had two lottery picks in between Miles Bridges and Jaren Jackson Jr., so it's not as if he was short on talent. He was just short on ideas, which made it a rare coaching failure by one of the greatest to ever do it.